Why Choose Penn State?
1. Intellectual Diversity
Our faculty and graduate students conduct research in a broad range of fields. At the heart of our work is a keen interest in crossing (and questioning) borders -- between national and regional literary fields, between literary studies and other disciplines, between verbal and visual forms of culture, and more. The department's strengths are truly global in scope with particular areas of emphasis including, but not limited to, inter-American studies, international modernism, East-West relations, East Asian Studies, Medieval Studies, European Studies, African studies, and Transatlantic studies. Recent graduate research has examined questions of gender, ethnicity, diaspora, globalization, and cultural conflict to name only a few areas of study.
Students in our program join a dynamic and diverse group of nearly forty graduate students. Many of them support their studies with teaching assistantships in our department's literature courses, or in one of the languages offered by the Comparative Literature Department (Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Arabic, Hebrew, Swahili) or courses offered by other units such as English, French, German & Slavic, Spanish, Italian & Portuguese, or in other areas such as Women’s Studies or Classics & Mediterranean Studies.
The department's close ties to our sister departments and programs has created a vibrant intellectual community for our students. In addition, our graduate students actively participate in interest groups in many fields such as those dedicated to African Studies, Science, Technology, and Society, Disability Studies, Ethics, and International American Studies.
New students get to know the department, the discipline, and each other in the Proseminar in Comparative Method in Literary Studies with Caroline D. Eckhardt, department head.
2. Academic Excellence and Innovation
Our department is committed to providing our students with the highest level of scholarly training. This commitment to excellence includes solid preparation in both traditional and innovative forms of comparative scholarship. Many of our faculty have been at the forefront of shaping the field of comparative literature and two members of our department provided essays for the report on the state of the discipline conducted in 2004 by the American Comparative Literature Association. We are also home to one of the top journals in the field: Comparative Literature Studies.
Our program offers an innovative and flexible curriculum that allows students, particularly those at the doctoral level, to design individualized programs of study tailored to their interests.
All students receive a thorough program in literary criticism. We offer an innovative doctoral minor in critical theory jointly sponsored with the Philosophy Department. Doctoral students can also choose to pursue minors in fields such as Women’s Studies and Latino Studies.
Graduate Program Coordinator Tom Beebee trades allegorical interpretations of Bob Dylan with St. Augustine, our departmental mascot and a favorite author in CMLIT 502: Classical Comparative Criticism.
3. Fellowships, Assistantships, and Grants
Our program offers excellent financial support at nationally competitive levels. All students admitted to the PhD receive four years of financial support and a semester-long teaching release to write their dissertations. Students admitted on the MA/PhD track receive five years of support and a semester release as well. Most students in the MA program also receive some form of financial assistance.
We offer special funds for students from underrepresented groups (U. S. citizens and permanent residents who are African-Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native American Indians). The Bunton-Waller Graduate Awards, for example, give four years of support for doctoral study at $20,000 plus tuition.
Students on assistantships take on a variety of assignments, including both language and literature teaching, working as a research assistant, or being an editorial assistant for the journal Comparative Literature Studies.
Our students have had substantial success in receiving competitive internal grants, awards, and fellowships, many of them offered through the Office of Research and Graduate Studies of the College of the Liberal Arts, as well as Funding Awards and Grant Opportunities for their study and research from organizations such as the Fulbright Program, the American Association of University Women, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and many others.
We also offer grants to support travel to conferences, to conduct research in foreign countries, and to visit archives.
Alexander Huang, Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature, leads discussion of a film in CMLIT453: Narrative Theory: Film and Literature.
4. Professional Training and Placement Services
We are deeply committed to helping students develop as professionals. For example, the Department makes a special effort to send students to annual meetings of major professional associations, such as the American Comparative Literature Association, provides close assistance in the preparation of grant and fellowship applications, and offers guidance in the writing of an M.A. paper in the form of a journal article. We regularly host workshops dedicated to training our students for the profession.
We work hard to assist our students in the placement process. Recent Ph.D.s are now working at doctoral institutions such as Princeton, Dartmouth, University of Florida, Florida State, University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign, and University of Minnesota, at fine liberal arts colleges such as Smith, Oberlin, Vassar, and William and Mary, and also at non-U.S. institutions such as the University of Glasgow in Scotland, the University of Niamey in Niger (as head of department), and the University of Swaziland.
For more information write us at cmlit@psu.edu, or visit our online Graduate Student Handbook.
Sophia A. McClennen, Director of Graduate Studies and Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, Spanish, and Women's Studies (right), at a dinner hosting Academy Award winning documentary Director Barbara Trent (left) with PhD student Sara Armengot.
phone: 814.863.0589 | fax: 814.863.8882 | email: cmlit@psu.edu
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